ITER India signs two Procurement Arrangements

Left: ITER's Norbert Holtkamp and ITER-India's Shishir Deshpande sign the Cooling Water System Procurement Arrangement. Right: Members of the ITER Cooling Water Systems Section.

ITER Principal Deputy Director-General Norbert Holtkamp visited ITER-India, the Indian Domestic Agency, during 22-23 March to discuss and resolve a series of outstanding issues related to both the ITER-India procurement packages and also the ITER Project as a whole. During his visit, in addition to very fruitful discussions, he signed Procurement Arrangements for the diagnostic neutral beam worth 11.4kIUA (roughly 1kIUA, or approximately EUR 1.5 million) and the cooling water system, worth 47.25 kIUA, with Shishir Deshpande, project director of ITER-India.

The diagnostic neutral beam system will deliver a beam of neutral hydrogen atoms of 100keV energy at 20-22A of beam current into the ITER plasma to be used primarily (through charge exchange spectroscopy) for measurement of helium ash in the tokamak. It will involve extraction of an unprecedented 60A current of accelerated hydrogen ions from a radio frequency-based ion source, before they are neutralized and injected in the magnetized plasma. The beam will also be modulated at a frequency of 5Hz as diagnostic requirement and have a re-ionization loss of less than 6 precent. All these parameters demand first-of-its-kind, cutting-edge technology and R&D which is already underway.

The Diagnostic Neutral Beam Procurement Arrangement is signed in India (left); pictured at right are members of the ITER Neutral Beam Section including engineering support staff.

The Indian portion of the cooling water system consists of three large subsystems—the component cooling water system, the chilled water system and the heat rejection system. The component cooling water system provides cooling water to various components of ITER, including the primary heat transfer system, at an inlet temperature of 28 °C. It transfers a total of ~1.2 GW of heat from these components to heat rejection system with a water flow rate up to ~8000 kg/s. The chilled water system will provide chilled water mainly for HVAC applications and also for cooling of some components with an inlet water temperature of 6oC and a total water flow rate of ~750kg/s. The heat rejection system is a system of large cooling towers—the final heat sink of the overall ITER plant, rejecting a total heat of up to 1.2 GW to the atmosphere.

The signature of these two Procurement Arrangements brings India's total to five. India has now signed for a total value of 123.9 kIUA out of a kitty of 244.21kIUA worth of components to be delivered to ITER. India has crossed the 50 percent mark of signed Procurement Arrangements (in value) for its deliverables to ITER.